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Howard:
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It is a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Ken Perrott all the way from New Zealand. Ken is absolutely in my opinion, the smartest man in the world on water fluoridation. I'm a big fan of your website, www.openparachute.wordpress.com where you basically have organized and listed every single fluoridation study and everything that's relevant. The United States is kind of crazy in that when we decided to iodize salt, that was a national policy. When we decided to do chlorine in the water, it was a national policy. Put vitamin D in milk, that's a national policy. When it came to adjusting the fluoride level in the water, the United States had the great idea that every single city should vote on this independently. The United States has over 19,000 cities so on any given day, 30% of the American towns do not adjust their community water fluoridation. 70% do. Every time you get 5 more times to put it in, 5 more towns take it out.
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I've been involved in water fluoridation debates my whole career. You're just a legend. Ken, tell me this, do you think the United States should make it a national policy for the whole country? Or do you think it's a good idea to have 19,000 different city councils voting on this all the time.
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Ken:
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I think it's hopeless having the councils fighting. We've got the same situation in New Zealand in that councils tend to be dominated by politicians playing politics. Often with strange ideas. They've got no schools in understanding the science of it. Nationally, like in New Zealand the national health authorities and the government recommend fluoridation as safe and effective. There should be no reason for councils to debate the issue except if the population don't want it. Even if the local electorate, if they're being irrational but if they're really scared of it, well then education is needed. The last [inaudible 00:02:35] we've had in New Zealand, has been overwhelming support for fluoridation. The other day we had one council who had ignored the referendum supporting fluoridation and voted against it. Two weeks later, they had to vote for it because there was so much protest. Councils don't have the schools to make decisions about the science and the health of it. It should be done centrally. There should be centralization.
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Howard:
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Why do you think ... I don't know many other countries, but I know the United States people well. I've lived here 53 years. In my opinion, Americans, there's just a lot of Americans who just don't like the government period.
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Ken:
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Yes.
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Howard:
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They don't want them putting anything in their water. They don't want them taking away their guns. Half my family thinks the government is the problem and they're never the solution. Why do you think there is so much anti fluoridation sentiment around the world?
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Ken:
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Well, there's a lot of propaganda. I mean, the people at Paul Connor who run fluoridation network. The actual network. He's getting paid by Mercola who's a natural [inaudible 00:03:48]. He's making money out of this ideology. It's the same in New Zealand that you find that a lot of the people very part of the question are actually natural health practitioners or very much part of the ideology. And industry is putting money into it. They're promoting the ideas. I just thing there are some fraction of society that's tied up in conspiracy theories. They're irrational theories. I often find I'm debating online with these people, that they can be very irrational. It's very hard to find someone who will have a rational debate about the issue.
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Howard:
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This is home in my family. I mean, I was born and raised in the middle of American Kansas and all 4 of my grandparents thought that the space landing was filmed in Hollywood and a conspiracy to scare the Russians. I almost look at the anti-fluoridation or religion or politics is they start with what they want to believe and then they work backwards from the facts. If they want to believe it's a conspiracy, how do you talk a person out of that?
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Ken:
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Yes. Well, as a scientist, I'm used to the idea that we've got to have an open mind. Scientists are easily fooled by themselves. The only thing that saves them is the objective facts. They do the experiments, they collect the data. I think it's a human frailty we tend to suffer from confirmation bias. If you could put ideology on top of that. You know, conspiracy theory, strong religion, or strong politics, it's pretty hard to get through to people.
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Howard:
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Explain confirmation bias.
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Ken:
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That's the idea that when you look at things, if you've got a preconceived idea, a preconceived theory, a preconceived ideology or something and you look at something, you'll see what you want to see. There's a famous video called a group of students playing ball. They're dressed in black and white. The audience is asked to look at this video and say who, is it the black person or the white person that gets the ball most? They play the video through and most students don't realize somebody walks through that video dressed in a gorilla suit. They don't see it because they're looking at the black and the white ball players. It's a human problem we have. Even scientists suffer from it and we have to work very hard to counter it.
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Howard:
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It is a very tough process and lately, the anti ... I still don't know if the internet yet is going to make the world smarter or dumber. When you search water fluoridation, 90% of the sites in my opinion are anti, miss-leading, not based in science. When the internet first came out, we thought, this is great. You're going to have access to all the libraries and science papers and peer reviewed journals in the world. What you're really getting access to is every other idiots opinion on the planet. When it comes to anti fluoridation ... I mean, when it comes to water fluoridation, almost all the sites that come up on a Google search are against it.
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Ken:
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Yes. Even if you've got a preconceived idea, even the scientific studies came out bad. This IQ story. A lot of people get fooled by that because they don't look at the studies critically. That's a problem because most people haven't got the skills to reach a paper, understand the thoughts of the paper and what it really means. On the IQ, it stands out like a sore thumb. It's pretty difficult for the ordinary person to have that level of schooling and reading science and understanding the the science. And understanding things critically and intelligently. I think in the end, the things ... When I take my car to get fixed up, I trust the mechanic who works on it. I think the problem is that when it comes to health issues, often ideologically driven people, try to get us not to trust their doctor, not to trust the health officials, not to trust central government and so on you know. It's a real problem.
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Howard:
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Do you want to take the first one flying around the internet that there's a study from Harvard that water fluoridation lowers your IQ?
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Ken:
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That idea goes back to 2012. What actually happened ... The back story to that is that the fluoridation network, it actually laid and hunted out poor quality, many Chinese studies which didn't have words written on the English language. Scientific literature. They hunted them out, got them translated and a lot of them were very poor quality studies, one or two pages long and suffer from not looking at confounding factors. For instance, I looked at a study the other day which did look at confounding factors. They'd taken 2 areas. A so called high fluoride area and a low fluoride area and they found IQ differ. The education of the parents differed. The school profession of the father differed, the ages differed. The ages of the children differed. If you're going to look at this sort of difference, you can't just assume that one factor is involved. That's of course what they've done.
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Even the 2012 study at Harvard University was reviewed by 27 papers and they said look, you've got to be careful not to [inaudible 00:10:07] in these things. It's been used by the anti fluoride people that it's proof that fluoride affects IQ. The only study that's every been done looking at community water fluoridation was done in New Zealand two years ago by [inaudible 00:10:23]. They found that there was no affect on IQ of community water fluoridation. The Chinese studies were done in areas of [inaudible 00:10:33] where levels of fluoride in the water were high and other [inaudible 00:10:38] and pollution and so on. Those studies just aren't relevant to community water fluoridation.
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Howard:
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You know, whenever I see something on the internet like the Harvard study confirms fluoride reduces children's IQ August 14, 2012, it's by Dr. Mercola. What is or who is Dr. Mercola?
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Ken:
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You'll know him better than I do. He's celebrated in the states. He's got a very popular site and he sell supplements and health advice and so on. He finances the fluoride action network. Mercola and the fluoride action network will end they actually formed Liberty Health coalition. That's where the money is coming from. People like him. In New Zealand, we've got an equivalent situation where we've had legal action taken against some councils because of the fluoridation and they're being taken by a group which is a lobby group for the natural health industry. Which you know, is quite a big industry in New Zealand and they finance that. This is where the money is coming from for these sort of people.
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Howard:
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What about it causes ADHD?
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Ken:
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Yes. That was another interesting paper which got a lot of publicity last year. Martin and Toll did a study. They got 30 US states, they looked at the prevalence of ADHD in all of them and the percentage of community water fluoridation and they found a correlation. Now the thing is, correlation doesn't prove causation. When you take the data and include it in the study, I did this myself. Things like median state elevation, poverty in the state, and house ownership, you find that fluoride doesn't actually have any affect at all. This is the problem with poor quality scientific studies where they haven't properly looked at confounding factors. They've gone in with the prejudice that fluoride causes something and they don't check out any other factors. That got a lot of publicity.
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The same thing happened in Britain with the hyperthyroidism study. Where the people who did that, the team, was sued by a well known activist actually. Didn't consider iodine. Iodine is a well known cause ... Iodine deficiency is a well known cause of hyperthyroidism. This is the sort of what we confront. There's a lot of bad science around. It takes people to develop some critical scientific schools to actually see through it.
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Howard:
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What would you say to people who say well, water fluoridation started when tooth paste didn't have fluoride in it. Now all the tooth paste has fluoride in it so we don't need water fluoridation?
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Ken:
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Yes. The research does show that opposite fluoride tooth paste has done a lot to improve oral health. The research actually shows that there is an effect of water fluoridation above and beyond that. This is because the existing teeth, when teeth are developing in young children, fluoride gets incorporated into the teeth and the bones. In existing teeth, the fluoride works through the surface. Fluoride concentration on the surface of the teeth helps attack demineralization. Tooth paste will do this, you know, it's very concentrated in the tooth for about an hour and then it declines. The advantage that water fluoridation gives us, is because you're drinking alternating water throughout the day, this helps to keep up the fluoride concentration on the surface. They're complementary. They're not a substitute for each other. We should brush our teeth using fluoride tooth paste and we should drink fluoride water.
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Howard:
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What do you say to people who say, well, you know, they banned it in Europe. They don't use it at all in Europe and Europeans have better teeth than Americans.
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Ken:
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I don't know whether that's true. There are some countries, I think Holland and Belgium, they made political decisions to stop using it. Some European countries Spain, Britain, Ireland, they use fluorided water. Other countries have gone for fluorided milk or fluorided salt. In a lot of countries, fluorided water is just not suitable. The particular [inaudible 00:15:40] aren't suitable for a fluoridation plant. Or for cultural reasons like the Italians, they drink a lot of bottled water. That raises the question of how much fluoride is in the bottled water. In other countries, I think in Denmark and Scandinavia, some of the natural levels of fluoride in the water are sufficiently high to approach the optimum levels. Some parts of Europe and Serbia and parts of Ukraine and so on, the fluoride levels can actually be too high and you have problems with excess fluoride.
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Water fluoridation isn't a solution for everybody. It depends on the situation. What the natural fluoride levels are in the water. What the reticulation schemes are like and for communities less than 1,000, it's not cost effective to use water fluoridation. It's very cost effective for large communities. It really depends. This idea that Europe has banned it, it's just not true. Europe has made the decision on a couple of cases not to use it but they use fluoride. The dentists use fluorides. They use mouth rinses in the schools. All sorts of things.
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Howard:
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What made you get so interested in this? I look at the work you've done. How long have you been working on your website? How long has openparachute.wordpress.com been under construction?
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Ken:
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About ten years now. I really only became active in 2013 when my local city stopped fluoridation even though we had a referendum. I started to look at all the ads that were being used and it was a campaign to reinstate fluoridation which we did win. We reinstated it. It's a chemist that has done the research. I'd already done research on fluoride in the soils and fluorosidis acid which is the most common fluoridating chemical. I knew straight away that some of the claims being made just weren't true. The thing that really got me going initially was the claim that flurosicis acid, the chemical that's most often used, is loaded up with lead and arsenic and all these elements, I knew from effect because I'd actually analyzed batches of this from what I was doing. I knew that the containment levels were extremely low.
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I started looking at it further and what I've done in the weeks, is I've tried to expose all these lies that are being told. I actually look at that when they talk about contamination. Just look at the labels. Turns out the acidity, the arsenic contamination that we drink in our water comes from our source water. It doesn't come from fluorosidis.[inaudible 00:18:42]. A lot of the times they just aren't true. I think that's what annoys me most of all. I am a fan of community water fluoridation but it's not what's got me going. It's the lies that are being told in science. We don't like scientific miss-information and distortion.
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Early on when my website first got going, I was interested mainly in things like creationism and climate change and things like that looking at the science. This is something that I knew a little bit more about and I thought I could do a useful job countering what was being claimed in the political sphere.
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Howard:
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What do you say to the people who say that we're not using natural natural sodium fluoride, we're using this fluoride chemical that's sold as a waste product from the fertilizer companies or the mining companies? We're not using natural sodium fluoride. We're using a chemical that's a byproduct for manufacturing and mining.
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Ken:
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Well, this was a ... Fluoride occurs naturally as a side effect of calcium fluoride calcite. You're right, calcium, literal calcium fluoride mineral. It would be the main source of fluoride in drinking water for most people. It can be very ... It can be quite high when the calcium levels are low in the environment. Just calcium fluoride itself, will support at 8 parts million fluoride in water and that's just too high. Of course, it's no good using calcium fluoride as a fluoriding chemical because although it can produce 8 parts million, it's just not soluble enough for adding to a reservoir.
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Of course calcium fluoride in the environment is contaminated with all sorts of things anyway. Sodium fluoride has been used a lot. It's a purer form of fluoride. The thing is that, in the natural environment, the fluoride in the water occurs as the hydrated fluoride ion. There's no calcium fluoride solution. It's a hydrated fluoride ion. Fluoride is a hydrated fluoride ion. This use of [inaudible 00:21:09] turns out to be a rather cheap and pure chemical which we can use. It decomposes when it is added water. It ends up going solid which is like sand and the hydrated fluoride and iron.
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The species that comes out of your tap is the hydrated fluoride enzyme. Exactly the same that appears in nature. This is something that some people, because their chemical understanding is so poor, they can't understand that. It's what a lot of anti fluoride try to make use of.
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Howard:
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What do you say to the claims that with the amount and prevalence of dental fluorosis that community water fluoridation should be stopped?
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Ken:
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If you look at the data, like in New Zealand recently, there was a survey done. They found a prevalence of dental fluorisis overall somewhere about 45%. In fluoridated areas and about 44-45% were in non fluoridated areas. It's saying that fluoridation hasn't caused dental fluorosis. In fact, I think in the States, they do show a difference. The difference is only in the moderate forms. You can break up dental fluorisis into the severe forms. Moderate and severe which is medically bad. People don't like it and they need to get some treatment to overcome it.
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Or the questionable [inaudible 00:22:46] very mild form which is not considered bad. In fact, surveys tend to suggest that adolescents and parents prefer teeth which are slightly whiter and that's the mild form. The majority of dental fluorosis if you look at it, although people will say there's 45% fluorosis. Only about 3% or 2.5% is in the severe form or moderate forms or forms that we should worry about. None of that is contributed by community water fluoridation.
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The feeling is that we're the model for dental fluorosis. Our increase is probably because people eating their tooth paste. Particularly kids consuming tooth paste. Particularly in America, the fluoride levels, the natural fluoride levels are too high. The thing is that anti fluoride people claim that 45% is due to community water fluoridation. It's not. The serious stuff is only about 2 or 3 % anyway and none of that is caused by community water fluoridation.
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Howard:
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I always think it's funny when they worry about fluorosis in the United States where 10% of Americans have zero teeth at 65. 20% have zero teeth at 75 and their whole mouth is filled with fillings and root canals and crowns and they're worried about a fluorosis spot on the tooth which usually can be brushed off, bleached off, whitened off. What do you say to the argument that the bottom line is the government should not be mass medicating our water? They don't put statins in there for cholesterol. They don't put insulin in there for diabetes. Why are they mass medicating the people for tooth decay?
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Ken:
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It's not really a medicine, fluoride. Legally in New Zealand, that's not a medicine. Community water fluoridation. That's a bit of really hearing. Of course, governments do and health authorities do make decisions and recommendations about things [inaudible 00:25:03]. Folic acid in bread. Iodine in the salt. Silenium is a problem. Juvenile silenium. They can make decisions like that. This is really not different. It's really just compensating for a deficient level of fluoride in the natural environment in some areas.
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Some people get very upset. They say, there's no other source of water so it's forced on them. If you talked to most any fluoridation people who say things like that, it turns out that they use a filter. A cheap filter which removes fluoride and other things. Bad taste and so on. They being disingenuous. I think we the community, is a whole support. A social health policy like that. Like education or hospitals. If they support us, then the minority that don't should be responsible enough to take alternative measures.
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In New Zealand, we've got free and secular education and there are some people who don't like that. Well, they pay school fees and they send their kids to a private school. Or they don't like our hospitals so they go to a private hospital. In this situation, if you don't like fluoride in water but the rest of the community does, then the responsible thing to do is a filter or use a different source of water. You'll find that a lot of the people who are raving on about it, actually do anyway so they aren't really being put out by it.
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Howard:
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To me, what motivates me so much, like I said, I graduated in 87. Can I tell you my water fluoridation story?
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Ken:
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Yes.
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Howard:
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I went to dental school. Born and raised in Kansas which is in the middle of the United States. When we were in dental school, it was so hard to get that pediatric dentistry requirements of two pullbotomies and two crome sole crowns on a baby tooth. A root canal on a baby tooth. It was almost impossible. This rich dentist had died named Lowrey and every Tuesday, his will paid for a school bus to go pick up poor 2nd graders in the inner city and bring them in and the dental school would fix up all their teeth.
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We'd be waiting for those kids to get off that bus just salivating hoping they had a cavity or something to get our requirements. They almost never did. You would ask the kid, do you have a tooth brush? No. Do you floss? No. You do his x rays and exam and you'd be lucky to find anything. Then I graduated from Kansas city and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona. It seemed like one or two out of every five children that came in my practice needed a pullbotomy and a crome sold crown and just wild decay. I figured out instantly that Kansas City had community water fluoridation and Phoenix didn't have fluoridation.
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I got out of school in '87. We formed a committee with the dean of the dental school, Jack Dillenburg and we got fluoride in the water. What I noticed now that it's 2016 is that the poor people benefit from this the most because they're all drinking city water at home, at school, out of their garden hose. It's the middle class and the rich that have money who are buying bottled water. Most of it comes straight out of reverse osmosis. What tickles me the most is that the poor people who can't afford to go to the dentist and don't have dental insurance are benefiting the most. The people that can afford to drink bottled water all the time, usually they have dental insurance and they are just paying for their decay.
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I think the next public health measure is people need to start labeling bottled water better like this does not have fluoride in it or this does have fluoride in it. I almost think it's a Robin Hood thing. We're taking money from the rich and fluoridating the water. Plus in America, if a kid has bad teeth and no money, America doesn't have socialized medicine like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. There's no real safety net for them. We're not like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Italy where they have better social safety nets. It's just a crazy deal but they seem to get crazier.
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What other debates are you seeing on the internet now flying around?
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Ken:
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The IQ one is something the fluoride action network is pushing really hard. Whereas the count recommendation for fluoride level is determined by research which balances the degree of fluorosis, dental fluorosis against the benefits. The people like, [inaudible 00:29:58] and the fluoride action network are trying to get people to adopt and basically accept the Chinese IQ research and lower the recommended level. They want it below zero. They're pushing very hard with that.
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At the moment, because of what happened with the poison water there and people are concerned about lead in their water, the fluoride action network is pushing very hard the story that fluorosis causes lead to dissolve out of the pipes and brass and so on and raise the lead levels in the drinking water. I think they're going to try to push that very hard. I think the big story.
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Howard:
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I do think it's funny when they just scream at those debates like keep the government out of my water. The government brings you your water. Do you think you went out and laid that pipe yourself all the way to the river? I tell you, I love going to those anti fluoridation campaigns because it really makes you understand the nature of man. At the end of the day, earth is ... The surface of earth is infected with 7,000 talking monkeys and everybody thinks they're as smart as an iPhone or a computer or whatever, but most of them are bat shit crazy.
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Ken:
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There is general problem that scientists complain about these days. There's a lot of anti intellectualism around. People say the government pays you or you can't trust what you say. The government pays scientists and they pay other experts to do jobs to get the knowledge which is required. The very fact that they're being paid is going to be used against them. There is a shocking attitude amongst a small part of the population towards experts and towards scientists and towards teachers and so on.
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Howard:
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I hear. If you quote the Center for Disease Control or The World Health Organization, they immediately shut it down and say, well that's the government. They're in on it.
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Ken:
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Yes.
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Howard:
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I say to them at these deals. Here I am short, fat, bald, humble dentist. Not pretentious. I'm like, why do you think I'm for it? I'm not an expert in plumbing or carpentry or electric. This is all I do. Why do you think I'm in on it? They look me right in the eye and say because you know this will model the teeth and they'll have to be repaired with expensive crowns. I'm down there in a pair of jeans and a t shirt saying, so you think I'm really doing this just so that I'll make more money selling crowns? They say, absolutely.
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Oh my God. It's just ... It's funny because I'm so proud of the dentists because they work so hard to reduce their disease. I mean, every hour you spend working on water fluoridation is taking money out of your pay check.
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Ken:
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Yes. Also, things I heard locally when three years ago there was this campaign to try to get fluoridation brought back. There was just so much controversy around that a lot of people, a lot of dentists, a lot of health people just refused to participate because they felt threatened. In fact, the district health board said they wouldn't allow the staff to participate in the debates because there was so much hostility from this small group of people. They're small and they're well organized. They know how to manipulate local bodies and local councils.
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Howard:
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I have 4 sons and one of them has asked me to stop doing this for those very reasons. He says, Dad, there's just a lot of crazy people and this really upsets the craziest people. He has asked ... They know where you live. They know where you work. You're just so transparent. My son has asked me several times to just drop it. In fact, you know what I actually thought of on the last water fluoridation deal, sometimes I think maybe we should just join them. Maybe I should just start an all natural tooth paste with no fluoride and just have it all natural and 5 ingredients and say, if this is what you want, I'll just sell it to you.
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Ken:
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Yes. That's what happens. Crooks are doing that.
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Howard:
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I mean, it's almost like, I don't want to fight you. I'll just join you. I've done the fight twice. If it comes back in 20 years, I'll be ... I'm . I'll be the same age as you. I don't know if I have the energy to do it again. Do you still have the energy? You're still doing it though. You're my role model. You're my idol. You're still fighting the good fight.
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Ken:
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The thing is, it's important to stand up against ignorance and it's important to try and explain the science. At the same time, there's a group of people, a portion of the population who will never be convinced. It's just pointless talking to them. I get into debates online about news and I always think to myself, the particular person I am debating with is an idiot. He'll often show that in the things they say. I'm not going to convince them. There will be other people around who will read it. They won't say anything but they'll be affected by it.
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I think it is important to stand up for that reason even though at times you often feel that what you can see is the opposition, there are people out there that can appreciate it.
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Howard:
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That's good motivation. You're actually motivating me. The last one kind of really exhausted me. We got it in the water again. The dean to the dental school, Jack Gillenburg showed up. It was a war but it was an exhausting war. I actually debated that Paul Connit at the live onstage. I put on Youtube and the comments after the Youtube debate about me are just crazy.
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Ken:
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Yes.
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Howard:
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They also get personal. They go, who would take health advice from a fat guy. I was like, all right. I noticed it didn't get me to lose weight. I don't want to get off topic here, but I want to get off topic for the scientific process. A lot of these people think the whole global warming is a conspiracy. Where do you weigh in on that? That it's a government thing to take away our gas and our cars. All the scientists on the climate, they all work for universities and if they publish a paper that says it's no big deal, they'll be fired. The only way they can keep their job is if all the climatologists have to keep saying this or they're all going to get fired. Where do you weigh in on that?
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Ken:
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It's all rubbish. I've debated live with people on the climate change issue and I think what has been happening ... I mean, fluoridation is very complex. But of course climate change is even more complex. It does need an experienced look at it. We have a process going now with [inaudible 00:37:41] around the world having an important publishing stop. It's getting reviewed and reviewed all the time and peer review and so on. They're coming to conclusions. The governments have asked them to do that. They want to know what the story is and what action they should take.
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I think it's pretty arrogant to reject the findings that they've produced just because you're not happy about them. Some people are rejecting it because they are involved in the oil industry or the coal industry or something like that. I think it's very arrogant for the ordinary person to take the attitude that you can wipe off all those expert's findings just by claiming that it's a conspiracy. It's just silly.
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Howard:
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By the way, I lectured in Auckland, New Zealand and I seriously thought it was probably the most beautiful country on earth. That's where they filmed Lord of the Rings, right?
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Ken:
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Yes. But down the south island, that's where you should really go.
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Howard:
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Yes. I did. When I went there, I did the tourist thing and I took the bus ride. It's a 15 hour flight from Phoenix to Auckland. When you fly a 15 hour flight, you stay a few extra days. I was just stunned at the beauty. That was just unbelievable beauty. You're a lucky man.
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What else do you want to talk about? Is there anything else? What's a good source of information? I personally like your website the most.
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Ken:
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I try to provide information probably at too high of a level. But as a scientist, I'm trying to explain the science. It's more popular where it's required. There is a couple of sites in the states. I like My teeth is one of them.
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Howard:
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My teeth?
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Ken:
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My teeth or something. Like teeth.
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Howard:
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What about club med?
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Ken:
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Well, club med is really just a indexing service for scientific publications. You have to be careful. I can respond to another person and say look, fluoride is bad. He said he did his search on Google or club med or somewhere. He searched for fluoride and toxicity and he got thousands of hits. I told him to search for water and toxicity. You'll get millions of hits.
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Howard:
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For what and toxicity?
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Ken:
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Water and toxicity. If you think fluoride is toxic because of the number of hits you get on Google or Club Med, then water is even more toxic. It's just silly.
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Howard:
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Yes. Any other issues you want to talk about? Anything else on the fluoride debate? Any advice?
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Ken:
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I'm not a very political person. I know in New Zealand, the situation in Hamilton, there's been an online group for making sense of fluoride. There's a lot of people who have joined that from other countries. America, Ireland, Australia. That's a good place. If you've got an interest, join that. Making sense of fluoride Facebook site. If you can, actually join the group because you keep up to date with all the issues that are coming up and people are checking out. They might prepare a document and ask people to look at it. It's quite a good site. I know I've met people from the states and Ireland and Australia through it. I think that's a good place.
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A lot of people do like Facebook and that's a good place on Facebook. Making sense of fluoride.
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Howard:
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So it's Facebook. Com, making sense of fluoride?
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Ken:
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Yes. Just search for making sense of fluoride.
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Howard:
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F-L okay. Okay. That's a good source. And of course your website, openparachute.wordpress.com. That's my favorite site. Do you think the Center for Disease Control's studies are up to date. A lot of people say, you know the CDC, the Kingston Newburg studies. All these studies were done back in the 50's and 60's. They say the Center for Disease Control haven't taken in any big, new studies since the turn of the millennium. DO you agree with that or disagree?
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Ken:
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I'm not familiar enough with a lot of the American sites. Your very difficult to search. The CDC is like that. There's another great part, little toxicity program research or something which is going to look at the question of what's the city going to do with the literature looking at the IQ and fluoride questions. Plus a few animal studies. I've made some contributions to that. Trying to get onto that site, it's very difficult to move around. I think apart from that, there are reviews like New Zealand has a very good up to date review done by the royal society of New Zealand and the office for the prime minister chief scientific advisor done in 2014 on the health situation regarding fluoride.
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It was actually done for councils that were asking for a scientific source. That's a good review. Good up to date. The Cocherane review is a little more recent. There's a lot of problems with that because of the way it's expressed. I think the Americans, the Irish, and the British have got recent reviews as well. I don't know how closely the CDC follows things.
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Howard:
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Okay. Well, hey, again, I think for anybody listening to this, if you want to go to the most amazing website ever, openparachute.wordpress.com, Ken Perrott has a PHD in chemistry in 1970 and he is one of the most analytical, non emotional, scientific works I have ever seen on community water fluoridation. Whenever I am talking to a dentist around from here to Texas to wherever talking about a fluoride debate, everybody goes to your site. Everybody is using it. I just want to tell you ... By the way, it's posted on dental town is 210,000 dentists and one of the issues and one of the forums is health issues and under that is water fluoridation. You're quoted on that all the time. Links to your website are on that all the time. If you ever want to join dental town and say hello to everyone, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
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I just really want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your love for science. You're love for the answer. You don't have an agenda. You just take your free time to stand up to ignorance. I think that's just amazing.
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Ken:
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That's very nice of you to say that. I also encourage comments on the blog. They can be quite entertaining at times.
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Howard:
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You're a role model to me because you're 20 years older than me and you're still grinning and you're still smiling and you're still fighting. I literally thought after the last fluoride debate, that I was done. Maybe I just needed to take a year off and recoup and pull myself back together again. I hope that when I'm 72 ... That's when, about every 20 years, it expires. Every time they put it in the water they have an expiration date.
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Ken:
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I know.
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Howard:
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It'll expire again and I'm sure you'll have another 100 studies up there in the next 20 years.
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Ken:
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Oh well, science is like that. It should always be reviewed.
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Howard:
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Right. Okay. Well Ken, thank you so much for your time and thank you for all that you do for dentistry, for community water fluoridation. Like I say, your stuff is read from dentists literally from every country around the world. Thank you so much for all you do.
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Ken:
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Thanks very much for having me.
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Howard:
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Have a great day, Ken.
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Ken:
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You too.
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Howard:
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Okay. By the way, if you ever add anything or if you ever want ... If you ever have something you want put out on your work or whatever, just email it to me Howard@dentaltown.com and I'll put it in front of 300,000 dentists for you. Whenever you have something to say or something new or whatever, I'll be your marketing man.
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